Interesting. I imagine they had to remove it - you just wouldn't know if there was any truth to it and could put the guy in the public eye incorrectly.
I started the r/sf subreddit 15 years ago (but don't currently moderate it). Yeah, that post was completely unsubstantiated, and was removed by Automod. I re-approved it, although the comment in question does contain misinformation and might have just been a coincidence.
(Yeah, I know, the r/SF subreddit is rough... it's always hard to run a subreddit where the only thing that people have in common is proximity. SF is my favorite place in the world, but it has many real problems. The mods consistently try to find a balance where it's not just an anti-SF crime-ridden sub, but also not censored or hiding real problems.)
> it's always hard to run a subreddit where the only thing that people have in common is proximity.
I don't mod any city/country subreddit, but I frequent several, and they are basically all awful. I keep visiting them for the rare gems of useful information, but 99% of the posts are complaints about crime or the cost of living, photos of the same five tourist attractions, or meta posts complaining about the aforementioned.
The moderators of /r/melbourne, in the lead up to a state election in which the right-of-centre's main campaigning point was crime reduction outright banned the posting of any crime related news. Make of that what you will.
As a subscriber to this sub-reddit, the constant spamming of stories relating to people of particular ethnicities committing crimes was annoying. It became a constant drum to summon to action racist trolls and idiots.
That and it was attracting a ton of undesirables to the sub that don't even live in Melbourne. It's been immeasurably better since that rule was introduced. There is plenty of other places for that sort of thing already.
On one hand censorship is bad, on the other crime in particular is an easy way for non-locals to astroturf or disrupt local communities because they can just grab a news article and argue on the basis of generic talking points. I think it’s absolutely the case that this is regularly happening in many Reddit communities already, I’ve seen it first hand in the San Francisco and Bay Area subreddits.
IMO the engagement optimization problem in social media is driving the increasing share of crime discussions online. Yes crime is getting worse in some areas, but I think crime just heavily drives engagement (which news media has known for a long time). With more conservatives going online, we’re seeing a bifurcation of traditional (cancel or callout culture, some kind of injustice) outrage porn - more common in the past when the internet leaned younger and more educated/urban - and now crime-related outrage porn that appeals to the right wing.
Agreed. r/Dallas, r/Vegas, r/Austin, all absolutely terrible engagement and the "power local" types who have to make themselves known in every single thread are insufferable. I've stopped engaging with city-local subreddits and subscribing to new ones anytime I move, they are just hubs of toxicity even by Reddit standards.
Nextdoor is much worse because instead of emergent community standards there is always some neighborhood admin who is the nosiest busybody you've ever heard of, because that's exactly the type of person who would be a Nextdoor early adopter. And the Nextdoor platform compounds the toxic nature of the product by giving crime posts wider distribution than all other kinds of posts.
/r/boulder is the same. If you only read that sub you'd think it was a Mad Max wasteland where the sidewalks are paved with used needles. It has a homelessness problem and its been getting worse since COVID, but it's still the safest place I've lived by a long shot.
Honestly I don't think I've felt safer in a city in the US than I did in Boulder. Haven't visited in 5 years, that's plenty of time for things to change, but it's unbelievable that it could be some crime-ridden hellscape.
I frequent /r/Austin and I have to respectfully disagree.
…kidding, that place is a cesspool that is basically exactly how you describe it. Overt cynicism and ranting about things every town has (traffic, off leash dogs) combined with power user trying to control the narrative constantly and gain some sort of quasi-celebrity status. Occasionally you get some good content, but it’s pretty rare.
FWIW, I don’t think it’s gotten measurably worse since I started going there periodically circa 2016. I think it’s simply the nature of Reddit and its inner workings producing this dynamic when it comes to local subs. Some are worse than others (likely having to do with the proportion of disenfranchised white dudes in the city), but otherwise it’s mostly going to be the story with almost any local sub.
I used to spend a bit of time on r/StLouis and it was the same. The problem with subredits is the same all over the site: They are run by humans with their own built in beliefs, biases, and grudges. Truth matters not what a mod believes.
> find a balance where it's not just an anti-SF crime-ridden sub
The good ol' see no evil hear no evil approach to dealing with problems. I don't expect a subreddit to solve the larger problems of the city, but crafting the narrative to downplay it isn't really helping either.
You're spot on, the only thing that binds the users is proximity. They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues, not to maintain a positive image for tourists.
You write "crafting the narrative" but all I'm looking for is to not see the same old posts about porch pirates and broken windows. There's already a lot of places for that rumination. Nextdoor, Facebook, etc.
When looking at regional subreddits, I want to see the places to eat, events that are coming up, when major road work is planned, what new amenities just opened up, etc.
It's totally fine and not nefarious to apply that kind of filter. To suggest the reason for it is image-massaging "for tourists" is unfair.
If I hosted a coffee meet-up and more than half the people showed up just to talk about deforestation, it’s pretty reasonable to take steps to try to change that up. You could call it “crafting the narrative to downplay it” but I’m not sure that’s fair. Maybe I just want to spend sometime enjoying coffee.
>The good ol' see no evil hear no evil approach to dealing with problems
This is a somewhat curious and surprisingly uncharitable thing for a relatively heavy and long standing HN user to write on, well HN. Right at the top of the submission guidelines, and relatively well followed, is
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
That's not because none of that is important, it's because there are endless other places to learn about it and discuss it. Indeed, coverage and discussion of such things are more the rule than the exception in classic major media, which still has the most enormous reach. You don't have to do absolutely everything in one single place. It's the World Wide Web. Other fora are a click away. I think it's hard to argue that "everything forums" are generally better and focused ones generally worse. It's not wrong to want to have places to find the positive and wonderful stuff that isn't on the front page every single day.
>They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues
Who is "they"? You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy here: if that is allowed to completely dominate, it'll drive away anyone who doesn't want that 24/7/365, and then all that are left are those who do. If HN suddenly just became a copy of major news front pages and comment sections, I suspect most of us would immediately move on.
>not to maintain a positive image for tourists
And this just seems like a pretty unpleasant dig. Any town let alone big city has all sorts of great stuff happening, interesting nooks and crannies, fun hobby groups looking for others to join, tips and tricks people have discovered to make living there more enjoyable, and on and on. Much of which can be hard to discover, even for those who have lived there a long time. Contrary to your assertion, it's not wrong even for locals to desire a place to find some of that even if it means keeping off a percentage of the generic endless political hot potatoes getting thrown back and forth. Why should a reddit (or any random web forum) suddenly be charged solely with "dealing with problems"?
My comment was a criticism of the San Francisco subreddit on Reddit, not of Hacker News. The rules are much more freeform over there and the site as a whole is constantly trying to find its balance between mob rule and moderator authoritarianism.
In this particular case the SF subreddit moderators want it to reflect an aspirational view of how they want SF as a city to be, and the users tend to want to discuss the city as it is.
No, it is not socially acceptable (or even expected) to kill family members because they've done something which brings shame to the family in all cultures.
I think you're wrong in this case, I think it refers to honour killings[0]. I'm not sure it's got any substance as a theory, but it's what the GP was suggesting.
After all the other rampant speculation turned out to be absolutely wrong, your first thought it to start some more rampant speculation with no evidence?
> The witness saw Momeni asking Lee whether Momeni's sister had been "doing drugs or anything inappropriate" earlier that day. Lee had to "reassure" Momeni that "nothing inappropriate had happened," according to the documents.
Or health and safety related. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Well Beloved Tech leader killed by crazy homeless person completely fits into the current moral panic about homeless and seedy people in San Francisco. The moral panic fueled of course because VC money is drying up and office vacancies are increasing.
Unfortunately, humans are emotional animals hardwired for bias and prejudice, and more often than "rational thinking" means rationalizing our preconceptions.
In a similar vein, Elizabeth Warren claimed to be Native American although DNA testing showed she had a statistically insignificant amount of Native American DNA.
Is it? I don't think DNA plays into who people elect/hire as much as a college degree. Also, people know which college they went to. People generally don't know what % of their DNA is Norwegian.
As a person with a degree from a UK university that got married and changed her last name, never have I ever passed a background check for university education.
Couple of companies asked me for a copy of my diploma, I just kindly reminded them that I am old and I moved many countries since graduation
This is way more common than people realize. Anyone can claim to graduate from anywhere. If top company executives and congressmen have been caught lying about their degrees, you can be sure that a large chunk of the regular population does it as well.
Practicing one's logic and epistemology in domains other than computing is good practice, and maybe good for the world since these shortcomings are involved in the majority of problems on Earth. Heck, if it was more common maybe a life could have been saved in this case!
And if people lack the ability to desire to practice, they may be stuck in that position indefinitely, which may play some role in why conversations on such subjects are always such low quality compared to those on objective matters.
Humans beings are terrible at logic and epistemology on subjective matters, and intelligence in objective domains seems to be often more harmful than helpful, perhaps it gives a misleading sense of competency leading to additional errors.
It was the most logical one with the data available at that moment. More data were added later leading to a better understanding of the case.
I understand why the police would feel the urge to advertise themselves and say "See? We are smarter than all of those people so we deserve the money", but mocking people that tried to help because their first assumptions were wrong, is not the more productive way to spend their time. People does not have a diviner ball.
> It was the most logical one with the data available at that moment.
Logical and appropriate/reasonable are two distinct entities.
I can see two coin tosses, and if they came up heads, it is certainly logical to conclude that the coin is heavily biased. Understanding that the quality of the data is poor and that one probably should suspend judgements until further data is in is a sign of maturity.
I've seen this play out over the decades: Hans Reiser, Ellen Pao, etc are common examples.
The data available says that about 10% of homicides are committed by a stranger. What data are you referring to when you say it was the logical conclusion?
There is nothing logical about assuming that a high profile person only in town for a few days would get stabbed multiple times randomly in the middle of a wealthy area at 2:30am on a Monday. It can happen, but no assumptions about it are logical given that most violent crimes are committed by people who know the victim and San Francisco is not remarkable in its rate of violent crime.
>See? We are smarter than all of those people
The only person I see doing that here is you. It wasn't logical, it was emotional based on preconceptions about the crime in the city.
It was pretty logical and if it happened again (random citizen stabbed on the streets of SF) I’d again assume it was probably a mentally ill, desperate drug addict or within that profile. Even if it’s not logical I’d have the same assumption. I’m ok with that.
The city has a lot of problems and people don’t feel safe. I’m not saying prison is a great idea but ignoring crime is worse.
You need to recalibrate your expectations. The majority of murders are not totally random, senseless attacks. Getting murdered by a random junkie is not a common thing.
I understand that and it’s my point actually. That many forms of crime have gotten so out of hand there that a guy being randomly murdered, although more unlikely than by someone they know, sounds about right.
It’s a story about decay.
8 years ago I would have assumed it was a crime of passion. Today? Probably further decay.
Publicly admitting that one was wrong shows a lot more character than obstinately insisting that one could have been right if only the facts were different.
Coming to a conclusion when the quality of the data is poor is shameful.
Unfortunately, society tends not to like people who don't take a stance on a given item ("Fence sitter"). As such, being a fence sitter is often the courageous stance, and drawing conclusions and loudly broadcasting them to the world often is, in some part, motivated by cowardice.
I live a long, long way away from SF but for better or worse, it is an epicenter of the tech industry. Things that happen there can have a tangible effect on our industry. So I am begrudgingly okay with it.
I of course do not defend the uninformed speculation. But I also can empathize with the frustration and fear that SF residents must feel at times.
I'd say the epicenter of the tech industry is to the south of San Francisco: Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County/San Mateo County e.g. Google, Apple, Facebook, Sand Hill Road.
Yeah, I called it an epicenter. I agree with you: if I had to pick only one it'd be Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County/San Mateo.
(Am I totally breaking the metaphor there by allowing for multiple epicenters? Perhaps. I guess an earthquake can have only one epicenter. But there could be multiple earthquakes, with multiple epicenters....?)
I like that HN allows for bay-area related discussions of a higher quality than other websites, but I can see why that would be annoying for people who aren’t Bay Area residents.
Still, YC is in the Bay Area, as is Silicon Valley. It’s a huge influence in the tech and entrepreneurship world.
goes to show some people are complete nut jobs. Best to go slow with most people until they have proven themselves to be non-deranged. And if they are crazy, then just avoid. I wonder if Bob could have just avoided this guy.
The linked article says that according to camera footage, Bob Lee (apparently willingly?) got into a car with Momeni.
Later that night, a surveillance camera recorded Lee
and Momeni getting into Momeni's white BMW outside his
sister's apartment. Additional footage obtained by
police shows the BMW heading to a "dark and secluded
area" near downtown San Francisco.
The two men are later seen standing together on a
sidewalk for a few minutes before Momeni apparently
stabs Lee. Momeni then tossed the knife, got back
in his car and sped away.
Yeah I know, but it’s not like he drove him to the woods, they drove like a mile down the street.
Is it too far fetched to say he would have stabbed him on that other sidewalk if he didn’t get into his car?
I mean, we can't really do more than wildly speculate. Momeni's actions don't really seem coherent or logical.
Additional footage obtained by police shows the
BMW heading to a "dark and secluded area" near
downtown San Francisco.
It certainly seems premeditated. So maybe he would have just stabbed him in front of the apartment building no matter what.
On the other hand, if he was going to kill Lee regardless, then why take the extra step of going to a second location? It seems like he truly hoped to avoid detection. So maybe he wouldn't have stabbed him in front of the apartment building, where there were plenty of cameras.
On the other other hand, that also doesn't make a lot of sense. Even though he didn't kill Lee in front of the apartment building, he.... left an absolutely damning trail of video evidence there, and then wound up being caught on video anyway at the secondary location. And then left the murder weapon at the scene, presumably with his prints on it.
In the end, Momeni's actions make just about zero rational sense so... how much useful speculation can we really do here? Zero IMO.
> Momeni's actions make just about zero rational sense
Combined with the stabbing being with a kitchen knife, I’m inclined to say he probably wasn’t entirely rational at the time, and more of a spur of the moment thing.
In common usage, yeah. He was clearly incensed by what had recently transpired and was incredibly sloppy.
In legal terms, this might well meet the definition of premeditation, as the article said. Grabbing a murder weapon, carrying it with you to meet your victim, and driving them to another location to carry out the murder probably more than meets the definition. He was clearly sloppy, and it certainly seems possible that he was wishy-washy to an extent (possibly hoping to talk things out with Lee somehow) but I don't think those things matter too much legally.
I'm sure this is clear and does not need to be said, but: I'm not a lawyer.
This is where things always get extra confusing when discussing crime.
A killing is never really "rational" from an ethical or moral standpoint, except for extraordinary situations like self-defense.
But premeditated murders are rational in another, more purely functional sense of the word: the killer was not untethered from reality, they understood the consequences of their actions, and took a series of concrete steps toward achieving the murder.
All these people are playing with fire. Nima was jailed twice: 1) DUI 2) illegally selling switch blades. Nima's sister (married) had an affair with Bob Lee (also married).
Can you please stop? We have to ban accounts that do this. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
What a wild ride! We went from "family man stabbed by crazy homeless person" to drama involving a plastic surgeon's Iranian wife and her overprotective brother.
The reactions to this are confounding. This is not a ride, this is a tragedy. So what that some people were wrong on the internet? There are children still without a father today.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Regardless of your feelings about it, this is quite the sensation, in the news headline sense.
Tragedy often makes "sensational" news, I think that's all GP was trying to say. I'd be very impressed if you've never read a sensational headline that involves a tragedy and been amazed at how the unfolding story defied your expectations and kept you on the edge of your seat.
What goes through this guy’s head? Did he honestly think he’d get away with it? Kill someone and go to jail the rest of your life because your adult sister might have done drugs?
Interesting that based on the text message from the sister, she knew who the murderer was as soon as the news of the murder came out, but presumably she did not come out to give up her brother. Wonder if she could get into trouble?
Pretty terrible example to use for the lawlessness of SF. Everybody involved is wealthy, and the attack was totally personal. I knew there was a reason why I suddenly stopped hearing about the stabbing; it isn't politically useful for that SF crowd anymore.
oh yeah, it was super clear when the hyperventilating was coming solely from one sector of the SF populace, which happens to be the same subset that keeps make questionable claims about pretty much all the SF crime and homelessness issues, while also saying that the only solution is mass incarceration. When it's something like SFGate/the chronicle using the story as a talking point you have to assume that it's just "omg this crime impacted a rich person for a change".
Weird anecdote but okay? My original comment on the stabbing story did wonder if it was targeted or random. Either way, passerby's walking past Lee gasping his last breaths for help is indicative of the civil rot happening in our cities.
The only thing worse than evil men is the indifference of good men.
Just knee-jerk whataboutism from somebody who's confessing that what I said applies to them too. His implication is that the "other side" justifies what he did, even though he admits what he did was wrong.
The larger point is that even after he knows the actual cause, he still doesn't stop trying to spread misinformation and exploit and co-opt the death of Bob Lee for his own political agenda and pre-existing narratives.
Yet he keep doing it, in spite of how Bob Lee's family feels about it and how agonizing it is for them that he and others like Elon Musk keep co-opting his death to spread misinformation and political propoganda.
>Mr. Lee’s brother, Oliver Lee, of Palo Alto, Calif., said in an interview on Thursday that the moves to “co-opt” the tragedy had been agonizing for his family. “Bob loved being in San Francisco, and San Francisco loved Bob,” he said, adding that young people would stop his brother on the street there and ask for advice.
>He said that his brother, a father of two who had recently relocated to Miami after spending most of his career in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, had left the city for work reasons and had returned there often, both for business and to spend time with his teenage daughters, who continued to live in the Bay Area with his former wife.
>Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney, said that “the loss of a young, vibrant leader and innovator has rocked our city and even beyond.” But she criticized what she said were “reckless and irresponsible statements” portraying the city as a hotbed of violent crime, pointing to comments by Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Twitter and Tesla, in particular.
> passerby's walking past Lee gasping his last breaths for help is indicative of the civil rot happening in our cities
We don't know what was happening in those cases. For example, we don't know those passers-by did or didn't actually see. Let's not make the same mistake all over again of projecting a pre-existing narrative onto a paucity of facts. (I don't mean to pick on you personally. We all do this, of course.)
Edit: FWIW, there's a long history of belief about bystander apathy which hasn't held up under scrutiny. Related:
Edit: When the original thread was happening after Bob Lee was killed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899), I considered pinning a comment to the top of the thread reminding commenters that none of us had any knowledge of what had happened and asking them not to have a flamewar between pre-existing narratives. I decided not to because I didn't want to overly interfere, but I regret that now.
I spent my entire day moderating those threads—to the detriment of the rest of HN actually. That happens sometimes when one story takes all the moderation oxygen. See the links below. (Edit: I'm going to move them to a child comment and collapse it so as not to overload this thread with 40 links. They're there if anyone wants them.) The reason I didn't post the comment I mentioned in the GP was not lack of moderation, but the opposite: I was moderating so much that I didn't want to be accused of over-intervening.
If anyone cares - in the end the decisions I made were (1) to factor out the comments that were actually about Bob Lee into their own thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341), and (2) to let the other flamewar just burn since there wasn't anything we could to do stop it. The first decision was a good one—that thread spent many hours at the top of the front page. The second decision was probably good also—I have a pretty fine-tuned sense of what we can't control. But I do regret not posting that other reminder. I very much wanted to, and overruled myself—and now I wish I had left a better record of the mods upholding the value of not rushing to judgement. I was painfully aware of this at the time.
p.s. You might be wrong about Garry too. I happened to talk with him that morning and although he didn't try to influence how we handled the story on HN (people at YC don't do that), the direction of the conversation was opposite to what you're assuming. (In any case, if you're implying that Garry's politics influence HN moderation in any way, that's definitely wrong. We haven't changed anything since he came back to YC.)
> Pretty terrible example to use for the lawlessness of SF. Everybody involved is wealthy, and the attack was totally personal.
The fact that a person was stabbed and killed on the street and the killer felt he could get away with it is kind of a good example of "the lawlessness" you're trying to downplay. This doesn't depend on the socio-economic status of the stabbing victim, or the attacker.
We don’t have any idea if the killer thought he could get away with it. Sounds like a crazy guy and I suspect he was in a rage and may well have similarly killed Lee if they happened to be in any other location other than SF as well
Wait, so this isn't actually because of the "explosion" of crime in SF, and is in fact just a completely usual example of one person murdering another person they know? As happens in almost all murders? And that the only difference is it involves a bunch of rich tech people? gasp
The explosion of crime is the caused by the city instructing police not to enforce property crimes and others. You can steal, assault, set on fire, spit on and use the bart as a bathroom. From 2019 to 2021 there was a 36% increase in murders.
The people who are most affected are immigrant small business store owners. Rich tech people fled SF for places that can hold bigger campuses
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] thread(Yeah, I know, the r/SF subreddit is rough... it's always hard to run a subreddit where the only thing that people have in common is proximity. SF is my favorite place in the world, but it has many real problems. The mods consistently try to find a balance where it's not just an anti-SF crime-ridden sub, but also not censored or hiding real problems.)
I don't mod any city/country subreddit, but I frequent several, and they are basically all awful. I keep visiting them for the rare gems of useful information, but 99% of the posts are complaints about crime or the cost of living, photos of the same five tourist attractions, or meta posts complaining about the aforementioned.
https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/7pmjwx/all_melbo...
IMO the engagement optimization problem in social media is driving the increasing share of crime discussions online. Yes crime is getting worse in some areas, but I think crime just heavily drives engagement (which news media has known for a long time). With more conservatives going online, we’re seeing a bifurcation of traditional (cancel or callout culture, some kind of injustice) outrage porn - more common in the past when the internet leaned younger and more educated/urban - and now crime-related outrage porn that appeals to the right wing.
If I could handle snow, I would love to live in Colorado.
…kidding, that place is a cesspool that is basically exactly how you describe it. Overt cynicism and ranting about things every town has (traffic, off leash dogs) combined with power user trying to control the narrative constantly and gain some sort of quasi-celebrity status. Occasionally you get some good content, but it’s pretty rare.
FWIW, I don’t think it’s gotten measurably worse since I started going there periodically circa 2016. I think it’s simply the nature of Reddit and its inner workings producing this dynamic when it comes to local subs. Some are worse than others (likely having to do with the proportion of disenfranchised white dudes in the city), but otherwise it’s mostly going to be the story with almost any local sub.
The good ol' see no evil hear no evil approach to dealing with problems. I don't expect a subreddit to solve the larger problems of the city, but crafting the narrative to downplay it isn't really helping either.
You're spot on, the only thing that binds the users is proximity. They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues, not to maintain a positive image for tourists.
When looking at regional subreddits, I want to see the places to eat, events that are coming up, when major road work is planned, what new amenities just opened up, etc.
It's totally fine and not nefarious to apply that kind of filter. To suggest the reason for it is image-massaging "for tourists" is unfair.
This is a somewhat curious and surprisingly uncharitable thing for a relatively heavy and long standing HN user to write on, well HN. Right at the top of the submission guidelines, and relatively well followed, is
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
That's not because none of that is important, it's because there are endless other places to learn about it and discuss it. Indeed, coverage and discussion of such things are more the rule than the exception in classic major media, which still has the most enormous reach. You don't have to do absolutely everything in one single place. It's the World Wide Web. Other fora are a click away. I think it's hard to argue that "everything forums" are generally better and focused ones generally worse. It's not wrong to want to have places to find the positive and wonderful stuff that isn't on the front page every single day.
>They all pretty much universally want a place to bitch about current issues
Who is "they"? You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy here: if that is allowed to completely dominate, it'll drive away anyone who doesn't want that 24/7/365, and then all that are left are those who do. If HN suddenly just became a copy of major news front pages and comment sections, I suspect most of us would immediately move on.
>not to maintain a positive image for tourists
And this just seems like a pretty unpleasant dig. Any town let alone big city has all sorts of great stuff happening, interesting nooks and crannies, fun hobby groups looking for others to join, tips and tricks people have discovered to make living there more enjoyable, and on and on. Much of which can be hard to discover, even for those who have lived there a long time. Contrary to your assertion, it's not wrong even for locals to desire a place to find some of that even if it means keeping off a percentage of the generic endless political hot potatoes getting thrown back and forth. Why should a reddit (or any random web forum) suddenly be charged solely with "dealing with problems"?
In this particular case the SF subreddit moderators want it to reflect an aspirational view of how they want SF as a city to be, and the users tend to want to discuss the city as it is.
???
Come on, man.
Cultures that have honor killings are the latter.
[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/honourcrimes/crimesofhonour_1.s...
It's OK to not know what happened, and to wait to find out.
Or health and safety related. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Even if someone did try and check, there’s nobody working to verify the records.
Why are very emotional but also non-tech related stories being posted on HN.
It's all flamebait (and I've been suckered into contributing to it)
Humans beings are terrible at logic and epistemology on subjective matters, and intelligence in objective domains seems to be often more harmful than helpful, perhaps it gives a misleading sense of competency leading to additional errors.
I understand why the police would feel the urge to advertise themselves and say "See? We are smarter than all of those people so we deserve the money", but mocking people that tried to help because their first assumptions were wrong, is not the more productive way to spend their time. People does not have a diviner ball.
Logical and appropriate/reasonable are two distinct entities.
I can see two coin tosses, and if they came up heads, it is certainly logical to conclude that the coin is heavily biased. Understanding that the quality of the data is poor and that one probably should suspend judgements until further data is in is a sign of maturity.
I've seen this play out over the decades: Hans Reiser, Ellen Pao, etc are common examples.
>See? We are smarter than all of those people
The only person I see doing that here is you. It wasn't logical, it was emotional based on preconceptions about the crime in the city.
The city has a lot of problems and people don’t feel safe. I’m not saying prison is a great idea but ignoring crime is worse.
It’s a story about decay.
8 years ago I would have assumed it was a crime of passion. Today? Probably further decay.
Unfortunately, society tends not to like people who don't take a stance on a given item ("Fence sitter"). As such, being a fence sitter is often the courageous stance, and drawing conclusions and loudly broadcasting them to the world often is, in some part, motivated by cowardice.
I of course do not defend the uninformed speculation. But I also can empathize with the frustration and fear that SF residents must feel at times.
I'd say the epicenter of the tech industry is to the south of San Francisco: Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County/San Mateo County e.g. Google, Apple, Facebook, Sand Hill Road.
Sometimes it’s used as a synonym for “FAANG HQ city” and suddenly “Bay Area” even includes Seattle and Redmond and parts of NYC.
(Am I totally breaking the metaphor there by allowing for multiple epicenters? Perhaps. I guess an earthquake can have only one epicenter. But there could be multiple earthquakes, with multiple epicenters....?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Still, YC is in the Bay Area, as is Silicon Valley. It’s a huge influence in the tech and entrepreneurship world.
On the other hand, if he was going to kill Lee regardless, then why take the extra step of going to a second location? It seems like he truly hoped to avoid detection. So maybe he wouldn't have stabbed him in front of the apartment building, where there were plenty of cameras.
On the other other hand, that also doesn't make a lot of sense. Even though he didn't kill Lee in front of the apartment building, he.... left an absolutely damning trail of video evidence there, and then wound up being caught on video anyway at the secondary location. And then left the murder weapon at the scene, presumably with his prints on it.
In the end, Momeni's actions make just about zero rational sense so... how much useful speculation can we really do here? Zero IMO.
Combined with the stabbing being with a kitchen knife, I’m inclined to say he probably wasn’t entirely rational at the time, and more of a spur of the moment thing.
In legal terms, this might well meet the definition of premeditation, as the article said. Grabbing a murder weapon, carrying it with you to meet your victim, and driving them to another location to carry out the murder probably more than meets the definition. He was clearly sloppy, and it certainly seems possible that he was wishy-washy to an extent (possibly hoping to talk things out with Lee somehow) but I don't think those things matter too much legally.
I'm sure this is clear and does not need to be said, but: I'm not a lawyer.
A killing is never really "rational" from an ethical or moral standpoint, except for extraordinary situations like self-defense.
But premeditated murders are rational in another, more purely functional sense of the word: the killer was not untethered from reality, they understood the consequences of their actions, and took a series of concrete steps toward achieving the murder.
For a moment I thought you were referring to all the commenters who thought this was a "SF going lawless" story.
Yes, many many people jumped to some terrible conclusions about SF because of this story. And by American standards SF isn't bad with violent crime.
But also the streetscape and property crime in SF are terrible.
Both can be true.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting unsubstantive/flamebait/swipe comments repeatedly - e.g.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35496316
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35443531
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844698
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34843974
Can you please stop? We have to ban accounts that do this. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
more like crazy
This is Musk's baseline. Nothing special about this case in that regard.
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edit: imagine citing the suffering of fatherless children as a reason not to criticize people who lied about how their father died.
"There's so much suffering in the world today; how will putting me in jail help?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Tragedy often makes "sensational" news, I think that's all GP was trying to say. I'd be very impressed if you've never read a sensational headline that involves a tragedy and been amazed at how the unfolding story defied your expectations and kept you on the edge of your seat.
Here is the full complaint: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23777761-momeni-char...
The only thing worse than evil men is the indifference of good men.
This happens all the time... wanna see something fun, walk around your city saying "hi" to everyone and see how often you get a "hi" back.
It is too bad people aren't cordial anymore.
Everyone just starts to assume that person is drunk, on drugs, whatever.
The larger point is that even after he knows the actual cause, he still doesn't stop trying to spread misinformation and exploit and co-opt the death of Bob Lee for his own political agenda and pre-existing narratives.
Yet he keep doing it, in spite of how Bob Lee's family feels about it and how agonizing it is for them that he and others like Elon Musk keep co-opting his death to spread misinformation and political propoganda.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/bob-lee-cash-app-killi...
>Mr. Lee’s brother, Oliver Lee, of Palo Alto, Calif., said in an interview on Thursday that the moves to “co-opt” the tragedy had been agonizing for his family. “Bob loved being in San Francisco, and San Francisco loved Bob,” he said, adding that young people would stop his brother on the street there and ask for advice.
>He said that his brother, a father of two who had recently relocated to Miami after spending most of his career in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, had left the city for work reasons and had returned there often, both for business and to spend time with his teenage daughters, who continued to live in the Bay Area with his former wife.
>Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney, said that “the loss of a young, vibrant leader and innovator has rocked our city and even beyond.” But she criticized what she said were “reckless and irresponsible statements” portraying the city as a hotbed of violent crime, pointing to comments by Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Twitter and Tesla, in particular.
We don't know what was happening in those cases. For example, we don't know those passers-by did or didn't actually see. Let's not make the same mistake all over again of projecting a pre-existing narrative onto a paucity of facts. (I don't mean to pick on you personally. We all do this, of course.)
Edit: FWIW, there's a long history of belief about bystander apathy which hasn't held up under scrutiny. Related:
Surveillance cameras debunk the bystander effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20417986 - July 2019 (161 comments)
Killer of Kitty Genovese Dies in Prison (Origin of “Bystander Effect”) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11430051 - April 2016 (3 comments)
https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/video-appears-to-sho...
Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555525 - April 2023 (1161 comments)
Edit: When the original thread was happening after Bob Lee was killed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899), I considered pinning a comment to the top of the thread reminding commenters that none of us had any knowledge of what had happened and asking them not to have a flamewar between pre-existing narratives. I decided not to because I didn't want to overly interfere, but I regret that now.
If anyone cares - in the end the decisions I made were (1) to factor out the comments that were actually about Bob Lee into their own thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341), and (2) to let the other flamewar just burn since there wasn't anything we could to do stop it. The first decision was a good one—that thread spent many hours at the top of the front page. The second decision was probably good also—I have a pretty fine-tuned sense of what we can't control. But I do regret not posting that other reminder. I very much wanted to, and overruled myself—and now I wish I had left a better record of the mods upholding the value of not rushing to judgement. I was painfully aware of this at the time.
p.s. You might be wrong about Garry too. I happened to talk with him that morning and although he didn't try to influence how we handled the story on HN (people at YC don't do that), the direction of the conversation was opposite to what you're assuming. (In any case, if you're implying that Garry's politics influence HN moderation in any way, that's definitely wrong. We haven't changed anything since he came back to YC.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35476876
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https://news.ycombi...
The fact that a person was stabbed and killed on the street and the killer felt he could get away with it is kind of a good example of "the lawlessness" you're trying to downplay. This doesn't depend on the socio-economic status of the stabbing victim, or the attacker.
Criminals all the way up.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
The people who are most affected are immigrant small business store owners. Rich tech people fled SF for places that can hold bigger campuses